WASHINGTON — The U.S. Marine Corps is investigating allegations an unspecified number of military personnel and veterans allegedly distributed nude photos of female colleagues and other women as part of a perverse social media network that promotes sexual violence.

The explosive revelation was first reported by The War Horse and published Saturday via Reveal, part of the Center for Investigative Reporting. Potentially hundreds of Marines may be caught up in the scandal, which has shaken top Pentagon officials and prompted death threats against the Marine veteran who disclosed it. An undetermined number of nude photos were shared online by way of a Facebook group titled Marines United, according to the report. The community has nearly 30,000 members, mostly comprising active-duty U.S. Marines, Marine Corps veterans and British Royal Marines.

The unseemly episode is deeply embarrassing for the Marine Corps and the Defense Department, proud institutions that, like many college campuses around the country, have struggled to curtail widespread problems with sexual assault. At the same time, it exposes an unsettling rift within a segment of American society consistently regarded as reputable, honorable and trustworthy.

A Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon confirmed that an investigation is underway, telling Marine Corps Times on Saturday night that military officials are uncertain how many personnel may be involved. The spokesman, Maj. Clark Carpenter, referred additional questions to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, but that agency's spokesman was not immediately available.

The Marines' top general, Commandant Robert Neller, declined to comment specifically about the investigation, but he condemned the behavior that's been alleged. "The success of every Marine, every team, every unit and command throughout our Corps is based on mutual trust and respect," Neller said in a statement provided to Marine Corps Times. "I expect every Marine to demonstrate the highest integrity and loyalty to fellow Marines at all times, on duty, off-duty and online."

Marine Corps Times has been unable to reach the administrator of Marines United. Defenders of the private group, following Marine Corps Times' initial report, pointed out members have helped Marines suffering from post-traumatic stress, and that the group has reacted in force to help suicidal service members.

Senior Marine Corps officials are circulating a 10-page document outlining the allegations and approved talking points about the service's effort to investigate them. Marine Corps Times obtained a copy early Sunday.

The news report was authored by Thomas Brennan, an Iraq and Afghanistan combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who founded The War Horse in 2016. The nonprofit news site focuses on military and veterans affairs, and tales of combat heroism.

After its publication, several members of the Facebook group lashed out at Brennan, making threats against him and his family. One suggested Brennan should be waterboarded, a cruel and controversial technique used for a time by American military and intelligence operatives while interrogating suspected terrorists. President Obama condemned the practice, while President Trump has said it should be reinstated — against the advice of his defense secretary, retired Marine Corps Gen. Jim Mattis.

That some U.S. Marines would suggest another deserves to be tortured or murdered is perhaps more troubling than the salacious allegations Brennan exposed in his reporting.

There's a "bounty on pictures of my daughter," Brennan told Marine Corps Times. "It has been suggested that my wife should be raped as a result of this, and people are openly suggesting I should be killed. ... Can you imagine being one of the victims?"

The story was "exhaustively researched," he added, noting that the Defense Department is conducting an investigation "to ensure the victims receive justice" and no one else falls prey.

"As a Marine veteran," Brennan said, "I stand by the code: honor, courage and commitment. This story was published with the intention of standing up for what is right and staying true to the leadership principle of looking out for Marines and their families."

His report includes a number of disturbing allegations. It suggests some women were stalked while others may have taken the compromising photos themselves, intending them to be private, only to be betrayed by whoever shared them with the Facebook group. Most troubling is the claim that members of Marines United proudly advocated for one woman to be sexually assaulted, an unidentified female Marine who was secretly photographed, according to the report.
The Marine Corps — perhaps more than the other military services — has grappled with social media malfeasance for years, both within the ranks and among its veteran population. Members of Congress, including Rep. Jackie Speier of California, have been after senior leaders to get tougher on confronting cyber bullies. That makes these new revelations all the more discouraging.

At its most disgraceful, the online bullying targets racial and religious minorities, those who are overweight, homosexuals, transgender people and women, whom social media trolls readily condemn as inferior to men and unworthy of the service's coveted Eagle, Globe and Anchor device intended to be a symbol uniting all Marines.
Former President Barack Obama's order to open ground combat specialties to women, an edict several Marine Corps generals have publicly opposed, seems to have fueled the offensive discourse online. Army leaders, by contrast, have welcomed the change, raising questions as to whether the Marines' institutional resistance to gender integration within its principal war-fighting units has unwittingly exacerbated the struggle with reducing deviant behavior.

Marine Corps officials are encouraging victims to report suspected crimes via NCIS, which has several means to contact law enforcement anonymously.

"The Marine Corps is deeply concerned," said Capt. Ryan E. Alvis, a Marine Corps spokeswoman. "... This behavior destroys morale, erodes trust, and degrades the individual." Alvis indicated the allegations, if proven true, would violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and could result in criminal charges. The Marine Corps, she added, has various resources available to those who believe they were targeted.

"In addition to the chain of command, resources include, but are not limited to: Military One Source, Inspector General hotlines and military chaplains," Alvis said. "Individuals can also report the incident to local authorities. Efforts are underway to notify commanders and other resource providers."

The top enlisted Marine, Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Ronald Green, said there is no place for "this type of demeaning or degrading behavior." He issued an emotional written statement encouraging Marines to come forward and expose the wrongdoers. It's their responsibility, he said.

"Stand up, speak out and be a voice of change for the better," Green said. "Hold those who misstep accountable. We need to realize that silence is consent — do not be silent. It is your duty to protect one another, not just for the Marine Corps but for humanity. ... I need you with me on this."

"Ultimately," he added, "we must take a look in the mirror and decide whether we are part of the problem or the solution."

]]>Marine CorpsMjölnirhttp://forums.militarytimes.com/showthread.php/9892-Nude-Photo-ScandalMSgt Aaron Torian, KIA 15 Feb 2014http://forums.militarytimes.com/showthread.php/9879-MSgt-Aaron-Torian-KIA-15-Feb-2014?goto=newpost
Thu, 16 Feb 2017 22:33:39 GMTPFC Torian was a candidate in the last Recon screening I conducted in the Marine Corps, he was a good man. I bumped into him here and there over the...PFC Torian was a candidate in the last Recon screening I conducted in the Marine Corps, he was a good man. I bumped into him here and there over the years and remember hearing of his death 2 years ago.

Master Sgt. Aaron Torian, 36, assigned to 2nd Marine Special Operations Battalion, was killed by an improvised explosive device that detonated Saturday in Afghanistan, his family told a hometown television station.

“He felt strongly about what we, the USA, were doing and we backed him 100 percent,” his mother Esta Smith told TV station WPSD 6 in Paducah. She told the station that her son will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

In 2006, the former Reconnaissance Marine was named 2nd Marine Division’s 2005 noncommissioned officer of the year following what his commanders called a stellar performance during Operation Phantom Fury — the brutal 2004 fight to wrest control of Fallujah, Iraq, from insurgent control.

“This distinction recognizes Marines who excel in job performance, physical fitness and leadership skills, all traits Torian exhibited while participating in Operation Phantom Fury, the push through Fallujah, Iraq, in late 2004,” reads a 2006 Marine news release announcing the award. “Then a lance corporal, he said he worked around the clock, learning every weapon system to effectively lead his five-man unit through the insurgent-riddled streets.”

He was promoted from lance corporal to sergeant in just four months, according to the 2006 release.

]]>Marine CorpsMjölnirhttp://forums.militarytimes.com/showthread.php/9879-MSgt-Aaron-Torian-KIA-15-Feb-2014Camp Lejeune Waterhttp://forums.militarytimes.com/showthread.php/9847-Camp-Lejeune-Water?goto=newpost
Sun, 15 Jan 2017 15:02:07 GMTFor those who served at Camp Lejeune, read below.
Dear Sir or Madam:
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) finalized a new rule on 13...For those who served at Camp Lejeune, read below.

Dear Sir or Madam:

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) finalized a new rule on 13 January 2017 to consider eight diseases as presumptive for service connection. This presumptive service connection provides VA disability benefits to veterans who have one of eight diseases and served for no less than 30 days (consecutive or nonconsecutive) on permanent or temporary duty at Camp Lejeune between 1 August 1953 and 31 December 1987. The eight diseases covered under the new rule are: adult leukemia; aplastic anemia and other myelodysplastic syndromes; bladder cancer; kidney cancer; liver cancer; multiple myeloma; non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; and Parkinson's disease.

The rule will become effective after a 60-day Congressional review. Following the Congressional review period, the Marine Corps will mail registrants pertinent information and updates about the VA's new rule. The rule will be effective 14 March 2017.

Congress granted the VA the authority to prescribe all rules and regulations presumptively connecting a disease to service. We appreciate efforts by the VA and Congress to support our Marines and their families.

The health and welfare of our Marines, Sailors, their families and our civilian workers are top priorities for the Marine Corps. We continue to work diligently to identify and notify individuals who may have been exposed to the chemicals in drinking water at Camp Lejeune. For more information about these efforts, or to update your contact information, please see: http://www.marines.mil/clwater/ or contact the Camp Lejeune Historic Drinking Water Call Center at (877) 261-9782, or e-mail clwater@usmc.mil. Please share this information with anyone that may have been at Camp Lejeune between the dates noted and encourage them to register with us.

With six seconds to live, they didn't run, they didn't hide. They stood their ground, and leaned in.

Two Marines from two different walks of life who had literally just met were told to stand guard in front of their outpost's entry control point in Ramadi, Iraq. Minutes later, they were staring down a big blue truck packed with explosives. In spite of this particular shred of hell bearing down on them, they stood their ground.
They leaned in.

Corporal Jonathan Yale, and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter. These two brave men lost their lives valiantly defending their post in Iraq, on 22APR2008.

I have read the story many times, and I understand it was powerfully retold by Marine Lt. Gen. John Kelly's to a packed house in 2010.
Just four days following the death of his own son in combat, Kelly eulogized two other sons, in an unforgettable manner.

From Kelly's speech:

Quote:

Two years ago when I was the Commander of all U.S. and Iraqi forces, in fact, the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine infantry battalions, 1/9 “The Walking Dead,” and 2/8 were switching out in Ramadi. One battalion in the closing days of their deployment going home very soon, the other just starting its seven-month combat tour.

Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, were assuming the watch together at the entrance gate of an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines.

The same broken down ramshackle building was also home to 100 Iraqi police, also my men and our allies in the fight against the terrorists in Ramadi, a city until recently the most dangerous city on earth and owned by Al Qaeda. Yale was a dirt poor mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and daughter, and a mother and sister who lived with him and he supported as well. He did this on a yearly salary of less than $23,000. Haerter, on the other hand, was a middle class white kid from Long Island.

They were from two completely different worlds. Had they not joined the Marines they would never have met each other, or understood that multiple America’s exist simultaneously depending on one’s race, education level, economic status, and where you might have been born. But they were Marines, combat Marines, forged in the same crucible of Marine training, and because of this bond they were brothers as close, or closer, than if they were born of the same woman.
The mission orders they received from the sergeant squad leader I am sure went something like: “Okay you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.” “You clear?” I am also sure Yale and Haerter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like: “Yes Sergeant,” with just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, “No kidding sweetheart, we know what we’re doing.” They then relieved two other Marines on watch and took up their post at the entry control point of Joint Security Station Nasser, in the Sophia section of Ramadi, al Anbar, Iraq.

A few minutes later a large blue truck turned down the alley way—perhaps 60-70 yards in length—and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete jersey walls. The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated, killing them both catastrophically. Twenty-four brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed. A mosque 100 yards away collapsed. The truck’s engine came to rest two hundred yards away knocking most of a house down before it stopped.
Our explosive experts reckoned the blast was made of 2,000 pounds of explosives. Two died, and because these two young infantrymen didn’t have it in their DNA to run from danger, they saved 150 of their Iraqi and American brothers-in-arms.

When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened I called the regimental commander for details as something about this struck me as different. Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. We expect Marines regardless of rank or MOS to stand their ground and do their duty, and even die in the process, if that is what the mission takes. But this just seemed different.

The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event—just Iraqi police. I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened and then to decorate the two Marines to acknowledge their bravery, I’d have to do it as a combat award that requires two eye-witnesses and we figured the bureaucrats back in Washington would never buy Iraqi statements. If it had any chance at all, it had to come under the signature of a general officer.

I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half-dozen Iraqi police all of whom told the same story. The blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine. They all said, “We knew immediately what was going on as soon as the two Marines began firing.” The Iraqi police then related that some of them also fired, and then to a man, ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

All survived. Many were injured … some seriously. One of the Iraqis elaborated and with tears welling up said, “They’d run like any normal man would to save his life.”

What he didn’t know until then, he said, and what he learned that very instant, was that Marines are not normal. Choking past the emotion he said, “Sir, in the name of God no sane man would have stood there and done what they did.”

“No sane man.”

“They saved us all.”

What we didn’t know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later after I wrote a summary and submitted both Yale and Haerter for posthumous Navy Crosses, was that one of our security cameras, damaged initially in the blast, recorded some of the suicide attack. It happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it. It took exactly six seconds from when the truck entered the alley until it detonated.

You can watch the last six seconds of their young lives. Putting myself in their heads I supposed it took about a second for the two Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on once the truck came into their view at the far end of the alley. Exactly no time to talk it over, or call the sergeant to ask what they should do. Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant told them to do only a few minutes before: “ … let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.”

The two Marines had about five seconds left to live. It took maybe another two seconds for them to present their weapons, take aim, and open up. By this time the truck was half-way through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time. Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi police, some of whom had fired their AKs, now scattering like the normal and rational men they were—some running right past the Marines. They had three seconds left to live.

For about two seconds more, the recording shows the Marines’ weapons firing non-stop…the truck’s windshield exploding into shards of glass as their rounds take it apart and tore in to the body of the son-of-a-bitch who is trying to get past them to kill their brothers—American and Iraqi—bedded down in the barracks totally unaware of the fact that their lives at that moment depended entirely on two Marines standing their ground. If they had been aware, they would have know they were safe … because two Marines stood between them and a crazed suicide bomber.

The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines. In all of the instantaneous violence Yale and Haerter never hesitated. By all reports and by the recording, they never stepped back. They never even started to step aside. They never even shifted their weight. With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could work their weapons. They had only one second left to live.
The truck explodes. The camera goes blank. Two young men go to their God.

Six seconds.

Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives or their deaths, but more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty … into eternity. That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight—for you.

THEY LEANED IN.

This is the caliber of men and women that serve our great country, out of dedication and commitment to something greater than themselves. These are the people The Battle Buddy Foundation works to serve after they return home from combat. Forged from the same commitment to our brothers and sisters in arms, TBBF was founded by veterans to serve veterans.